Take a walk on the wild side: Punk music walking tours in New York City

Introduction

This article investigates a punk music walking tour that takes place in the Lower East Side in New York and makes an argument about authenticity, nostalgia, and the construction of masculinity and selfhood that takes place when fans visit sites that have a mythological status in their fan community. The study of music tourism, as a type of cultural tourism, is a diverse interdisciplinary field operating at the intersection of studies of popular music, sound studies, urban studies, psychogeography (or flânerie) and tourist studies. Place and space, if conceptualised as a sonic soundscape, lend particular cityscapes an acoustic resonance that can be mapped and studied. As John Connell and Chris Gibson (2003) note, ‘popular music is spatial – linked to particular geographical sites, bound up in our everyday perceptions of place, and a part of movements of people, products and cultures across space’ (p. 1). And books devoted to topics like The Place of Music (Leyshon, et al., 1998), Mapping the Beat (Swiss et al., 1998), or special issues of journals like this one, remind us that music matters:

Music articulates identities, rebellion, conformity, performance, status, product, community, subculture, high culture, distinction, place, space and more. In the construction of distinctive spaces, styles and genres, music reproduces the inequalities and struggles of the late modern world. (Lashua et al., 2014: 3)

And so, as readers of Tourist Studies understand, popular media associated with musical genres and artists cultivate a narrative and mythology about particular locations that then become a powerful drawcard for many fans.

The case for New York City and cultural tourism

The signifier ‘New York’ triggers immediate mental images of the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Chrysler Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Twin Towers. As Christoph Linder, (2006: 32) notes, it is a city defined by its skyscrapers and skyline and its role as a capitalist commercial hub. New York is also, of course, a powerful cultural nodal point – a hotspot for recording studios, corporate headquarters for the entertainment and music industry – and it is a magnet for theatregoers and music tourists. Visitors to New York anticipate what they will see (tall buildings, lavish stores, clubs and theatres, bustling streets) because they have read about locations or seen them on screen so frequently. Furthermore, as Mario Maffi (2004) observes, ‘It is impossible not to see New York’ given a potential visitor’s exposure to ‘all the pictures, the photographs, the films, and the ads’ (p. 88). Tourists can picture the skyline and the street life before they see it with their own eyes or hear it with their own ears (Maffi, 2004: 14). Perhaps even more so than London and Paris, this is especially the case with New York City because its landmarks are so often seen on our screens. Accordingly, Urry and Larsen (2011) argue that

It is virtually impossible to visit places which people have not travelled to ‘imaginatively’ at some time. We have all been to New York via NYPD Blue, Spin City, Seinfield, Friends and Sex and the City, through the eyes of Woody Allen, Spike Lee and Wayne Wang, and not least through the 9/11 terror attacks. Walking the streets of New York trigger memories of countless media-circulated images. (p. 116)

As this special issue illustrates, and as John Frow (1991) notes, ‘knowledge of place precedes and informs experience’ (p. 125). Indeed, Urry and Larsen (2011) argue that in relation to an iconic city like New York, ‘the tourist gaze is largely “preformed” by the existing mediascape’ (p. 179); it is rehearsed before being performed. Thus illustrating, in Urry and Larsen’s (2011) words, that sometimes ‘the fame of the object [or place] becomes its meaning’ (p. 149). And when walking around Manhattan everywhere you go you are reminded of this fact by row after row of books about New York City and endless references to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) and Sex and the City (1998–2004). For those visiting the city for longer than the 2 or 3 days needed to visit Times Square, the 9/11 Memorial and the other ‘must sees’, fans of much-loved television shows like Sex and the City can now take organised tours to visit the places idealised in their favourite show – tours otherwise known as ‘media pilgrimages’ or ‘film-induced tourism’ (Urry and Larsen, 2011: 117). This is increasingly becoming a popular option for those not interested in, or already acquainted with, other sights like the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art or the Guggenheim. This type of tourism involves fans negotiating idealised constructions manufactured by the media and tourism marketing and their own embodied experience of visiting the places.

Accordingly, music tourism is both a sonic and multi-media phenomenon, because as Adam Krims (2007) points out, we are exposed to music via ‘music video, films, television, newspapers and magazines, novel, theatre, and […] the Internet’ (p. 8). Fans visiting New York as part of a media or music pilgrimage will be alert for very particular signs. If ‘the gaze is constructed through signs, and tourism involves the collection of signs’ (Krims, 2007: 4), these fans will recognise those signs, almost certainly invisible to others, and will gain meaning from them as they are signifiers of great emotional importance within their fan community. This form of cultural pilgrimage is increasingly popular for both tourists and tourism scholars but what is considered noteworthy as a tourist sight is highly subjective. For example, scholars like Barry Shank (1994), Sara Cohen (2007, 2009), Philip Long (2014), and Robert W. Fry (2014) have written about locations (Austin, Texas; Liverpool; Sheffield; and Helena, Arkansas, respectively) that have immense importance for music fans but perhaps not for the general tourist trade. For, as Urry and Larsen (2011) note, ‘Much travel results from a powerful “compulsion to proximity” that makes the travel seem absolutely necessary’ (p. 21). Fans feel compelled to visit iconic music locations and what we witness (following Bourdieu, 1984) is cultural capital being accumulated and performed within a fan community.

Methodology

My background in literary studies and the humanities privileges close reading of (literary, filmic and popular culture) texts and research is generally conducted in libraries rather than out in the field. However, my long-held interest in what I call street narratives (often described as or associated with psychogeography or flânerie) has meant that in recent years my research has increasingly led me out onto physical streets rather than merely representations of them. My interest in popular music and soundscapes has also necessitated a more embodied and non-traditional approach to my research for a scholar based in an English department but admittedly one where I also teach into media studies.

When engaged as part of a walking tour in a city soundscape, the tourist gaze (and my own) is part of complex performance involving many senses: sight, sound, smell, touch and movement. Following De Certeau (1984), walkers (like myself) who are emotionally and physically engaged with their environment write these texts into being – we observe and create narratives of place. These kinds of narratives are sometimes described as a form of psychogeography; a music tourism scholar Philip Long (2014: 49) has written persuasively about the power of the psychogeographic tourist experience and how it can bring an aural city soundscape to life. Like Long, I find the work of Merlin Coverley (2006) and Guy Debord (2006) helpful in this context and so the writings of Baudelaire (1995), Walter Benjamin (1997) and Michel De Certeau (1984) on flânerie. Indeed, de Certeau is essential reading on the experience of viewing New York from above and at ground level and the possibilities of walking a text into being. ¹ I need to be on the streets to witness that process and interaction.

The work of sociologists like Michael Bull (2000) regarding the way people navigate and interact with cityscapes as soundscapes when plugged into personal stereo devices has also been helpful for my research. There is now a rich body of work about music, place, space and the movement of people around urban spaces and how music and popular media contribute to the construction of selfhood (especially masculinities) and my work is very much interdisciplinary. Like similar research published by Shank (1994) and in this journal by the previously mentioned Long (2014), Fry (2014) and Fitzgerald and Reis (2016), my methodology comprises field research in the form of participant observation (involvement and detachment) and descriptive observation, but I did not conduct interviews for this study (Davies, 1999). I recognise that ‘no cultural description can be neutral. Every representation is drawn from a particular limited perspective which produces its own effects’ (Shank, 1994: xi–xii). In addition to my fieldwork, which was conducted in October 2015, I read scholarship about music, place and cultural tourism; key scholars like Connell and Gibson (2003), Krims (2007) and Urry and Larsen (2011); historical material about the Lower East Side (Abu-Lughod, 1994; Maffi, 1995); and punk music (Frith, 1983; Kozak, 1988).

Following Dean MacCannell’s (1974) seminal work on tourism, it is often argued that tourists are seeking the ‘authentic’ and this, of course, is also true of music tourism. It has become a commonplace that tourists may think they are experiencing something special and rarely seen but what they are usually really seeing is not private or hidden but merely a simulation or ruse – a performance (Goffman, 1959). To that end, the work of literary tourism scholars like Barbara Schaff (2011; and others like Kennedy, 1998; Squire, 1996; Watson, 2013; Westover, 2009) is extremely helpful as it prompts contemplation about what might constitute ‘sights’ on a cultural tour. In some cases, these ‘sights’ are invisible or easily overlooked on busy city streets and they require an expert gaze to identify them; one of my research goals in conducting fieldwork was to educate my own gaze. For, as Schaff (2011) and others note, some sites are not really sights but instead ‘signify an absence or a gap’ (p. 179) and only exist in the memory or imagination of the viewer employing the tourist gaze. As Schaff (2011) notes, while acknowledging Baudrillard’s hyperreal and simulated places, this kind of looking is a creative exercise and one that does not only involve the eyes but also the imagination:

They [cultural tourists] create imaginary spaces, filled with myths and nostalgia which serve to veil the fact that the real place has been changed, lost, or has never existed in the first place. (p. 179)

This is particularly significant when urban ‘renewal’ occurs (or the often fraught and political process of gentrification), which then changes the social and physical shape of the cityscape. I argue that music fans are more knowledgeable and self-aware than perhaps acknowledged and they understand that people, places and spaces change. It is the cultural tourist’s role to seek out what was once there and to ascertain if a cultural footstep remains and whether it has ongoing significance for them as fans. It is those careful watchers and listeners who travel by foot who are best able to locate, identify, experience and, possibly, recreate the mythology and take part in its evolution.

In recent decades, therefore, what can be deemed ‘authentic’ continues to be debated in tourism studies and scholars like Frow (1991) caution against over-simplifying quest narratives and pilgrimages given both Benjamin’s (1997) work on reproduction and Baudrillard’s (1994) well-known thoughts on hyperreality. Ning Wang (1999: 351) helpfully clarifies that there is a difference between authentic ‘experiences’ and authentic ‘objects’ or places. Schaff (2011), van Nuenen (2016), and others suggest that authenticity is an ‘inherently ideological structure [… and] the authentic is always negotiable, contextualised, and a socially constructed process rather than a fixed entity’ (Schaff, 2011: 169). This is true of the punk music fan community who visit New York to validate their ‘authentic’ experience as a fan by visiting ‘authentic’ locations that are special within their community and I acknowledge my own positionality in this context as a White middle-aged academic conducting fieldwork while accompanied by (fan) companions. Music tourism enables fans to mobilise that self-construction and that connection to their ‘true’ (perhaps younger) selves when they are on holiday (or conducting fieldwork) and not constrained by the mundane and everyday (Wang, 1999: 352). As van Nuenen (2016) notes, ‘The discourse of being or becoming oneself is incorporated in many a marketing strategy’ (p. 194) and it is part of what could be called a trope of self-actualisation or ‘self-branding’. Of course, this is not to suggest that authenticity can be essentialised or that ‘true’ music fans are one-dimensional or necessarily stuck in a nostalgic time warp. As Shank observes, ‘no signifying practice capable of transforming identities operates in isolation, but always within an historically structured cultural and economic context’ (p. x). I argue that this negotiation with the authentic in music tourism is an evolving and dynamic construction but one that very much has its historical roots in the political and social milieu of the 1970s.

The Lower East Side punk scene

Every borough in Manhattan and New York has its own history and identity and the area formerly called the Lower East Side (but now the East and West Villages) plays an important part in New York’s social and political history. Music and art are very much part of the cultural make-up of the area but it also has a particular significance in the history of immigration in New York City, and in class politics and the battles for marginalised groups to occupy public space more generally. The area has always reflected the boom and bust rollercoaster of American economic history and parks, tenements and commercial sites all continue to compete for space. Much has been written about the history of the Lower East Side and volumes like Janet L Abu-Lughod’s From Urban Village to East Village (1994) and Mario Maffi’s Gateway to the Promised Land: Ethnic Cultures in New York’s Lower East Side (1995) provide valuable insights into the area’s role as a gateway for immigration, with waves of migrants originally from Europe (Italians, Ukrainians, Jews and Irish) and then after World War II from Puerto Rico. The area also has a significant Black population. Midway between the skyscrapers in Midtown and Downtown, it has traditionally been an area populated by the poor and the homeless and there have been many battles over areas like Tompkins Square Park (Abu-Lughod, 1994: 5; Maffi, 2004: 20). In addition to this rich history, the area has also attracted artists, musicians and writers and Bowery and Greenwich Village have featured in New York’s musical and cultural mythology for over a century (Maffi, 2004: 41, 48). It is not just locals who are influenced by the mythology but tourists too because as Paul Reckner (2002) reminds us, ‘The investment of different groups of New Yorkers in particular historical narratives is shaped by experiences, social identity, and class position’ (p. 97). Although the object of my study is the history of punk music in the Lower East Side, I acknowledge the other very rich histories that are also there to read on the streets of what are now the East and West Villages.

The Lower East Side has music ‘heritage’ value, as it was the birthplace of the punk genre, which makes it attractive to niche ‘fan tourists’ (Long, 2014: 49). Inspired by the culture that first sprung from Andy Warhol’s Factory, the Velvet Underground and The Stooges in the 1960s, punk music exploded in New York in the early 1970s with its loud, fast-paced, unruly sound. Musicians like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop paved the way for a new breed of performers and the New York punk scene of the 1970s and early 1980s centred on the Ramones, Blondie, New York Dolls, Television, Patti Smith and Talking Heads (Hager, 1986; Kozak, 1988). Traditionally, punk has been described as a reaction to the economic and political environment in Britain, North America and Australia in the early 1970s and it has been associated with the working classes and angry White heteronormative masculinity. Whatever the case in the United Kingdom, it is generally agreed that the New York punk music scene has its own (queer) flavour and the influence of artists and musicians like Warhol and Reed who inspired the 1970s punks certainly complicates any assumption of heteronormativity. Moreover, pioneering female artists like Patti Smith and Deborah Harry tempered, to some extent, the dominant maleness of the New York punk scene and Shank (1994: 92, 122), Hager (1986: 10, 17), and others have written about female punk fans who were also part of the culture. As Paul Fryer (1986) notes, punk has conventionally been labelled as the music of the ‘dispossessed and the economically downtrodden’ and it was urban, of the ‘streets’ and council estates not the ‘suburbs’ (p. 1). In Britain, in particular, it was portrayed as the music of class warfare and the foot soldiers wore a distinctive uniform of ripped clothes, leather, S&M gear, and the soon ubiquitous safety pin. Punk spoke of anarchy and rebellion, and it was the art form of the artless: the amateur guitar player who could master three chords and singers who could not and did not want to hold a tune. Songs were short, loud, discordant, angry and provocative (Pottie, 1993: 5). ² Of course, academic scholarship and Julien Temple’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980) and The Filth and the Fury (2000) and many other mockumentaries, documentaries and commentaries have complicated what can sometimes be a somewhat one-dimensional depiction of the punk scene, and it should not be assumed that fans are gullible dupes who are unaware of the complexities and contradictions of the punk identity. Suffice to say, the New York scene that so inspired the British one had a different look and sensibility, and was less obviously ‘offensive’ and combative. As discussed in Steven Hager’s Art After Midnight (1986) and as Fryer (1986) also notes, ‘Class warfare was irrelevant to American punk; art was central’ (p. 4). However, it should not be overlooked that art was also very much a part of the scene in Britain and that Malcolm McLaren always claimed a link to the Situationists and likened the performance of punk music to a détournement.

Sociologists have traditionally argued that popular music offers an accessible and recognisable means for young people to negotiate and construct their identity as part of a cultural community that has its own history, codes and uniforms. This suggests that when teenagers gravitate to a scene like punk they are joining a subculture or community with its own rites of passage and conventions (Traber, 2001: 30). However, as Pottie (1993) suggests in his paper which ‘tries to “make sense” of how others have “made sense” of punk rock’ (p. 1), how one defines popular music is complex and disciplinary specific. In his paper, Pottie (1993: 4) argues that punk music has chiefly been classified as a ‘subculture’ (Hebdige, 1979), via ‘audience analysis’ (Grossberg, 1984) or as ‘art’ (Frith, 1983; Fryer, 1986). In addition to lengthy analyses of punk’s intersection with commerce and fashion, and as already flagged, there has been much debate about the supposed outsider politics of punk and how much of that outrage and violence was a performance. Frith (1983), Fryer (1986), Pottie (1993), Shank (1994) and Traber (2001) all contribute to a comprehensive history and analysis of the punk scene, and it is not this article’s intention to revisit that material here. What is relevant here is how members of a fan community journey to New York to part in a punk music walking tour to inform themselves about that history and to witness the remnants of that culture on the streets of the Lower East Side.

Rock Junket New York City

This article argues that the punk soundscape is still etched on the streets of New York and that walkers employ their feet to mobilise the tourist gaze (their eyes) and recall what they have experienced with their ears. To that end, Bobby Pinn (actual name Ron Colinear) takes small groups on foot around the East and West Villages to retrace the steps of iconic punk musicians and to bring the soundscape to life for committed fans. Pinn is the owner/operator of Rock Junket music walking tours. Participants make a reservation and payment (US$39) online and then meet on a street corner or a park and set off on foot for a 2-hour tour of the streets with their expert guide. Sights include the places where musicians lived, played and recorded, and, to a lesser extent, locations that are mentioned in songs. The locations where iconic photographic images like album cover shots were taken are also stops on the tours, as are bars, venues and iconic concerts halls – or the places where they once existed – and memorials like street signs and graffiti.

Pinn knows these streets. He spent 17 years working in the music industry with bands like Rancid, Ramones, Nirvana and B. B. King (Pinn, 2009: 10). He started the Rock Junket tours in 2001 and has since accumulated even more stories and knowledge, which resulted in his book Rock Junket New York City (2009) which includes information about ‘over 212 Rock ‘n Roll landmarks’ (p. cover). The book was self-published via Dog Ear Publishing in 2009 and despite (or perhaps because of) its cheap paper stock and smudged print, he is justifiably proud of it and he even autographs it with a rock star flourish. Pinn (2009) quotes himself in the epigraph when he writes, ‘Music fans are the life support for rock history’ (p. v). Indeed, the existence of the book is a testament to this ethos and the marginal status of the text is true to the ‘do it yourself’ (DIY) aesthetic or ‘spirit of amateurism’ exemplified in the photocopied fanzines of the punk movement (Fryer, 1986: 1, 9; Pottie, 1993: 17). Pinn is quick to tell readers in the book’s introduction that as a teenager in Pittsburgh he read everything he could about music and planned his escape to New York City. He now identifies very strongly as a proud New Yorker.

Pinn embodies his performance as the wise, ‘cool’ insider, who was there in the heyday of punk rock and this ‘cool factor’ associated with the entertainment, fashion and media industries has been identified by other scholars as a critical factor for tour guides (Baum, 2007; Urry and Larsen, 2011: 84). It is his association with the stars that provides his cultural capital and Pinn (2009: 33) is careful to promote his insider status as his book is sprinkled with photos of him with bands like the Ramones, and icons like Hilly Kristal (p. 37), and Iggy Pop and Ice-T (p. 47). In adopting the persona Bobby Pinn, he confesses that he is aligning himself with the safety pin associated with the punk movement and with icons like Joey Ramone, Johnny Thunders, Sid Vicious and Richard Hell, his ‘rock idols’ who all adopted pseudonyms (Pinn, 2009: 10). Hence Colinear is very astutely augmenting his authenticity and his self-branding as Pinn but, at the same time, is gesturing to the playful and performative aspect of punk and rock culture. The small number of colleagues he employs to take some of the tours has similar industry kudos and also adopts personas.

Tour guides who lead walking tours both experience and manufacture an embodied engagement with the countryside or cityscape and one which is conducted on foot and involves all of the senses (Urry and Larsen, 2011: 111). Tourism scholars acknowledge the ‘cultural and aesthetic capital’ that is required of hospitality and tourist workers and the emotional and, often, physical work involved (Baum, 2007: 1392–93; Urry and Larsen, 2011: 83, 92). Workers who are walkers must look and act the part – they must be someone who can walk the talk. Accordingly, punk rock music fans require an informed guide; ideally that person should be a local who knows the streets and knows the bands – someone who might know where to get the best egg cream soda, a beer after hours or where to find Joey Ramone or Bob Dylan’s first apartment. Bobby Pinn is just that person. Fans who post on Pinn’s website applaud the preparation that Pinn has undertaken for this role and his physical performance is acknowledged and lauded. As one participant posted online, ‘Bobbie Pinn is a true fan and excellent guide, well researched and prepared, funny and insightful, gives you a unique perspective on the characters and physicality of the East Village’ (DGNichols). ³ This fan notes the importance of physically being on the streets to appreciate the culture.

Although the tours obviously take place on the streets, preparation for this tourism takes place online and via popular media, and engagement also takes place after the tour has ended. The Internet has enabled his business because tours are booked online, the book and t-shirts are online too, and fans engage in pre and post-tour storytelling, which further generates publicity for the tours. It is a cottage industry, not a slick corporate affair, and the fact that the tour is conducted on foot rather than on a bus highlights its bespoke nature. In tourism studies’ terms, it could be classed as a ‘real holiday’ as it is a niche product provided by a small specialist operator (Urry and Larsen, 2011: 108). Pinn’s business does commodify ‘popular culture and musical creativity’ for ‘tourist consumption’ (Long, 2014: 51) but I argue that punk has always traded commercially on its outsider cachet. It gives tourists a taste of ‘heritage’ punk New York as Pinn experienced it and it retains an ‘edgy’ feel because it is a boutique service for niche fans. Another kind of détournement, perhaps? Pinn decides where people walk and what they look at, he directs what becomes a collective gaze; he is the choreographer, curator and narrator. Pinn has the advantage of being the creator and business owner of Rock Junket. No doubt, there must be moments of boredom, irritation and of physical discomfort, but as the maker of what looks like a thriving small business, Pinn has built a trade around his own passion and expertise, and so, presumably leading the tours is not the drudgery that is reported by many others working in tourism or hospitality who are not fortunate or entrepreneurial enough to be the boss (Baum, 2007: 1392). There does not appear to be a case to suggest – perhaps as has been suggested with some individuals working in service industries – that he is compromising his ‘authentic self’ (Wang, 1999: 361). Presumably in donning a mask when Colinear adopts the pseudonym and persona of Pinn, it is also easier for him to separate his work as Pinn and his private life as Colinear, given he is able to remove the mask and cease the performance when the tour ends.

Pinn plays the role of a benevolent host who politely demonstrates interest in what must be – for the most part – banal confessions of fans, but he dignifies their stories with a hearing and in rare cases, no doubt incorporates some stories into a broader, richer narrative that he tells about the bands and the Lower East Side. His stories are part of a signifying practice that tells a narrative about place, and their stories presumably add to the palimpsestic and multi-dialogic narrative he recounts. Following De Certeau (1984), their voices combine to form a rich tapestry woven together by many authors and although it is the story of punk that is privileged on that tour, this does not deny or invalidate the many other histories of the Lower East Side. The act of walking and talking, and this exchange of stories, can be liberating and educational for participants and it does provide an opportunity for Pinn to recount tales of genuine resistance and class ‘warfare’ that have occurred in the Lower East Side in places like Tompkins Square Park. ⁴ Both high profile well-organised acts of resistance and small everyday ones have a place and a history on these streets.

As Connell and Gibson (2003), and others like Bull (2000) have noted, ‘Music is one way through which ordinary acts of consumption and movement throughout daily life could constitute “tactics” of subtle opposition (De Certeau, 1984) that emerge from within the cultural spaces governed and controlled by others’ (Bull, 2000: 16). And some associated with the punk scene, like Malcolm McLaren who worked in both New York and London, were quick to draw the link to the Situationists and to détournements. This underscores the important relationship between music, place and space and a physical presence on the streets. According to Urry and Larsen (2011), ‘In the late eighteenth-century development of walking as resistance, the “freedom” of the road and the development of leisurely walking were modest acts of rebellion against established social hierarchy’ (p. 22). The streets of the Lower East Side are infused with these psychogeographic stories and battles. Clearly, a walking tour in Manhattan is not an adventure holiday undertaken for the physical challenge or a truly revolutionary act but they provide a means to share stories while walking the streets and viewing sights not perhaps considered noteworthy to high culture tourists. To date, this kind of ambulatory homage to an area’s social and political history has received very little scholarly attention by those working in music tourism or psychogeography.

The East Village

A guided tour, like the Rock Junket one, is attractive because it facilitates proximity to sights that only exist when a guide makes them visible. They enable fans to see sights that have meaning for this niche group but, of course, necessarily this means that other sights and histories are ignored or glossed over (e.g. previous waves of immigrants like the Puerto Rican community that were such a vibrant part of the Lower East Side post World War II). For Rock Junket music tourists, assisted by Pinn, they see a different East Village, one that is also informed by their ears and years of listening to the artists who lived and played in the area. The Lower East Side (LES) was a magnet for artists, musicians, and eccentrics, as documented in Clayton Patterson (2005) and, as Pinn (2009) notes in his book, ‘The East Village has often been called the counterculture capital of the world’ (p. 15). They cultivate a village ethos so often talked about by scholars like Maffi (2004) and Abu-Lughod (1994) and this leads to an imaginative geography that is less about the skyscrapers and skyline but more about what is happening at street level in small and large venues, and even in domestic spaces. The tour (and Pinn’s book) includes references to apartments and buildings where musicians like Iggy Pop, Lead Belly, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix, Joey Ramone, Madonna, Joe Jackson and artists and writers like Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jackson Pollock and William S. Burroughs once lived. This is not a tourist route for mainstream tourists but one where a particular framing takes place, enabling the music tourist to recognise and appreciate sights that would be mundane and of no significance at all to a person outside of the counterculture or punk fan community. Pinn’s (2009) tour includes many sights along St. Marks Place, including a stop outside Joey Ramone’s former apartment building The St. Mark, the Continental club at St. Marks Place, the St. Marks Hotel, the Dom, the Gem Spa, and the former Bridge Theatre, site of Yoko Ono ‘happenings’ and alternative art hub, and a store called Trash and Vaudeville (p. 18). For the most part, these places are not tagged or memorialised in a way that would attract the eye of a local or a visitor; they are merely apartments, stores, and hotels that are part of the fabric of the community.

Given that there are relatively few tourists on the streets of the East Village, the local residents and business owners act as players in a tourist narrative and, of course, this should be problematised as it may lead to African American, Puerto Rican and homeless people being relegated to the status of local ‘colour’. As one participant posted on Trip Advisor, ‘[the tour was] brilliant, interesting, and very real’ (chrisball1). ⁵ To borrow from Robert W. Fry’s (2014) King Biscuit case study,

residents become signifiers and cultural representations of ‘realness’ while visitors become the locals in an imagined and temporary community … past and present, both real and imagined, move beyond the walls of a museum, allowing fans to realize through performance their own perceptions of what constitutes authenticity. (p. 71)

Fry (2014) goes on to suggest that this type of performance moves from an historical one ‘to become a signifier of tradition realized through participation in the present’ (p. 71). What transpires when locals (‘natives’) are extras in the fans’ performance as ‘true’ insiders seeing the ‘real’ Lower East Side is fans seeing a limited back view but one that is rich in experience even if blinkered to a particular world view.

In this context, two music venues on the tour are particularly significant. The first is Bill Graham’s Fillmore East which opened in 1968. The Fillmore East was originally a very large cinema called the Loews Commodore Theater, it underwent several name changes and transformations before becoming the legendary Fillmore East (aka ‘the Fillmore’) in April 1968 (Pinn, 2009: 23). Although the venue was only open for 3 years, musicians such as Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Beach Boys, The Who, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and many more iconic artists performed there. Many of those artists recorded celebrated live albums at the Fillmore East which further cemented the venue’s status (Pinn, 2009: 24). Ironically, the site now houses a bank but there are several memorials to the venue in the form of plaques and mosaic tributes on curbs and light poles. These objects now stand in for the ‘real’ ones. Bill Graham has also been memorialised with ‘Bill Graham’s Way’ at the corner of 2nd Avenue and East 6th Street. Thus, a road and a street sign act as a signifier for a person who is now absent (deceased) and a venue that is now a tribute to capitalism (a bank) rather than the counter-culture. Rather than being a sign that is emptied out of meaning, it is a literal sign that is loaded with meaning and history. It is a necessary marker – a homage – to mark what no longer exists in ‘reality’ but does in memory. As one fan posted, ‘Bobby Pinn is a fab tour guide and took us to some legendary locations. Many are sadly not [what] they once were, but it’s a great rock ‘n roll pilgrimage’ (hfitsell). ⁶ The experience remains an authentic one even if the venue has morphed into a less ‘authentic’ object.

The second and more significant site for punk fans is the CBGB (Country Bluegrass and Blues) club and the adjoining OMFUG (Other Music for Uplifting Gourmandizers) – now recognised as the birthplace of New York punk rock. The club, with its famous awning, has been the subject of books, films, and various tributes and it has an iconic status in the punk community (see Roman Kozak’s This Ain’t No Disco: The Story of CBGB, 1988, for example). ⁷ The CBGB was formerly the Palace Bar or Hotel in the Bowery and was surrounded by flophouses; it was run by Hilly Kristal, his ex-wife Karen and, in later years, their children. Kristal’s original goal to attract CBGB musicians and fans to the area was not successful but the edgy location made it an ideal place to attract punk fans. The Ramones, Television, Mink De Ville, Voidoids and Blondie all started their careers with residencies at the club, which mandated that all bands play original music only (Maffi, 2004: 125; Pinn, 2009: 42). The graffiti-covered walls of the club and the filthy bathrooms and urinals are the stuff of legends and reproductions feature in many series and films set in the New York punk scene in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mandy Stein’s Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB (2009) is a documentary that tells the story of the fight to close the club down. Given the working-class roots of the area and centrality of the poor and homeless to the history of the Lower East Side, it is particularly sad and ironic that the dispute was with the Bowery Residents’ Committee who sued the club in 2005 for unpaid rent. The Committee used the space above the club to help the homeless and so the dispute was portrayed as a fight between Kristal and the homeless. Kristal claimed that he had not been informed of a rent increase and he won the case. The club eventually closed in 2006 when the lease was not renewed following the dispute and Patti Smith headlined the final concert. The site is now the location of a high end retail outlet called John Varvatos, but it still trades on the punk cachet and sections of the walls signal the venue’s former incarnation. In 2013, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Like so much of the former Lower East Side, one chapter closes, another begins; yet another site associated with the homeless and also with punk rebellion has disappeared only to be replaced by an ode to commerce and fashion. Cynics might observe that this is appropriate given that punk has always been about commerce and fashion rather than working-class rebellion, but this does not necessarily negate the impact of the visit for a true fan who would potentially also wryly note the irony of participating in a genteel guided tour of the CBGBs in daylight hours.

The Ramones feature heavily on the tour and fans see former apartments, the iconic wall next to a vacant lot where their first album cover was shot, a street named after Joey Ramone (Joey Ramone Place), and a large mural on the Bowery across from the former CBGB. The Bowery itself has a long history as a location of bars, theatres, flophouses, brothels, cheap hotels and nightclubs, and it carries its own cultural cachet in the history of American music, and it is the subject of books and documentaries (Maffi, 2004: 124). In addition to the Ramones mural, there are several large street-art memorials to punk stars like Joe Strummer from The Clash (although he was British) including the one on the side of the Niagara at 112 Avenue and 7th Street, and they are just the latest additions to a long history of murals and street art that was typified by Puerto Rican art from the 1930s onwards (Abu-Lughod, 1994: 143; Maffi, 1995: 133). The history of the music and the people who have lived in the Lower East Side over the generations is there to see on the streets if you look for it, but the battle continues to ensure it survives the encroaching gentrification in the district.

The tenement is an integral part of the geography of the Lower East Side and Abu-Lughod (1994: 63–79) devotes a chapter to what she calls ‘The Tenement as a Built Form’ in her collection. Historically, the slums and tenements of the Lower East Side have been mythologised in books like How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis (1890), Henry Roth’s (1934) Call It Sleep and Jerome Charyn’s (1986) Metropolis (Maffi, 2004: 43, 94). Accordingly, although not technically of relevance to punk, another mandatory stop on the East Village tour is to the tenement building featured on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti album (Pinn, 2009: 27). And, unlike the transformed CBGB and Fillmore East, it still exists as a tenement, but the representation of the building was doctored to protect the identity of alleged drug dealers living in the building and that has become part of the mythology of how the cover shoot came about. Pinn’s website⁸ and sites like Trip Advisor are full of images of fans holding the well-known album cover in front of the tenement at 96–98 St. Marks Place. ^9,10

The West Village

The West Village (or Greenwich Village) does not have the strong association with punk that the East Village has and so Rock Junket offers a West Village tour that focuses primarily on the Beat Generation and on the early years of Bob Dylan’s time in New York (before the constant irritation of intrusive fans forced him out of the city). The West Village tour commences at Washington Square Park ¹⁰ and includes references to artists like Dylan, Bo Diddley, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott who were all residents at the Washington Square Hotel early in their careers (Pinn, 2009: 51). Those on the tour walk past famous music venues such as The Bottom Line (now part of New York University campus) and although more famous for gigs played by Bruce Springsteen, the New York Dolls and the Ramones also played there, so there is some interest for the punk rock fan. The Bitter End hosted Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Bobby Neuwirth and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott among many others and so it is also featured on the tour (Pinn, 2009: 53). Nearby, a former music venue famously reimagined as the Electric Lady Studios by Jimi Hendrix was turned into a recording studio at great expense, ensuring that it was waterproofed and soundproofed (Pinn, 2009: 56). It remains an iconic operating studio and regularly pops up in the popular media in imaginative guises. The tour passes several of Dylan’s former abodes and the street where he and his then girlfriend Suze Rotolo were photographed for the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (Pinn, 2009: 63). ¹¹ Fans also stroll down the famous Bleecker Street, which is dotted with cafes, apartments and venues of consequence to musicians like Woody Guthrie, as are nearby Bank Street and McDougal Street.

Conclusion

The Rock Junket walking tour is, for many participants, an extremely meaningful event in their identity construction as punk music has formed a soundtrack for their lives. As argued, strong identification with punk music has been integral to the construction of protest masculinity for many male fans, just as female and queer fans have employed their fandom as a way to articulate their marginality and outsider status. As Wang (1999) and others have observed, ‘For many individuals, work and everyday roles impose constraining and monotonous routine in which individuals find it difficult to pursue their self-realization’ (p. 363) and thus the ‘touristic experience’ is incredibly meaningful in relation to ‘intra-personal authenticity’ and ‘self-making’. Indeed, after taking the tour one participant posted, ‘I have a closer link to the music I love’ (chrisball1). ¹⁰ In the case of the older fans on a punk walking tour, the experience may have been fantasised about and planned for decades and, following Fry’s (2014: 75) case study, it may take on the form of an ‘obligation’ or ‘mission’. I am arguing, however, that it is not necessarily the sad experience that Frow (1991: 136) and others have discussed in relation to nostalgia. As this special issue highlights, fans may potentially have spent lifetimes following particular performers going to live gigs (and perhaps filming or recording them and sharing them online), buying albums and DVDs, memorabilia (e.g. t-shirts and posters), consuming memoirs and biographies, reading and writing music journalism, perhaps joining a fan club or participating in fan sites on the Internet (many of these acts are not just ones of consumption but are often also generative). In taking part in music tourism they are visiting the place where this narrative is set and they are weaving their own stories into this palimpsest. This practice incorporates elements of education, group solidarity (community), heritage and memory, creating and reinforcing a brand – in this case New York City and bands like the Ramones – and brand community (Urry and Larsen, 2011: 19). In other words, they are engaging with popular media and popular music through tourism.

Tourists happily buy into the narrative and the product being sold when they purchase Rock Junket memorabilia – and as they walk around wearing the branded merchandise they write a narrative not only about their fandom but about the authenticity of the tour and the host – thus becoming active agents in the cultural economy. As Frow (1991) and others have argued, ‘the souvenir has as its vocation the continual reestablishment of a bridge between origin and trace’ (p. 145). These fans have not just (passively) seen the sights, they have (actively) walked in the footsteps of their idols and have the t-shirt to prove it. Presumably for at least some (mostly middle-aged) fans there is a feeling of accomplishment that they can afford to take the tour – to travel from all corners of the globe – particularly given the narrative of resistance, of the underdog and the underclasses, that punk rock articulates, there is pride that they have survived, prospered, and are ‘living the dream’. I argue that this form of nostalgia is not melancholy or mournful but rather a joyous ‘authentic experience’ where ‘authentic locations’ are visited and reimagined. This experience is even more special when shared by other fans as part of a fan community where stories can be shared over a drink after the tour or via popular media. ¹² Of course, this is not to ignore the long history of the Lower East Side before the 1970s punk movement and the area’s significant role in immigration, multiculturalism, poor and working-class lives. Clearly a case could be made that the real story of the underdog is that of the poor and the homeless in the area, not the relatively prosperous music tourists, but I am not making that case here.

In 1972 when Lou Reed first urged his fans to [take a] ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, he could not have imagined that 40 years later, middle-aged punk music fans (and their partners like myself) would pay to participate in music walking tours around the gentrified streets of the East and West Villages in New York before, presumably, returning to their comfortable hotels in Midtown. The fans who are still invested enough 40 years after the heyday of punk to journey to New York as an act of homage, speaks to a lifelong love of the music and the subculture. I argue that it is a triumphant and celebratory story of survival that deserves greater scholarly attention. It’s a story about immigration, travel, struggle, respect and community, another chapter in the participants’ lives and in the history of the Lower East Side.